Join us on a soul-stirring odyssey with Bishop-Elect D.E. Polk by traversing the powerful confluence of spirituality and social justice. Our conversation untangles the rich tapestry of African American communities' spiritual leadership, reflecting on his family's civil rights heritage and its influence on his ministry. We confront the unexpected resistance within marginalized groups to inclusivity, ordaining women, and embracing LGBTQ+ individuals, while also navigating the delicate balance of authenticity and trust in diverse congregations.
We take a transformative journey from traditional teachings to a theology of universal salvation and inherent divinity challenges and inspires, drawing us into a deeper discourse on the nature of hell, the devil, and scriptural contradictions. Together, we'll sift through these complex themes and rediscover the role of perceptions in shaping our divine experiences.
As we close, we'll immerse ourselves in the eclectic spiritual gumbeaux that is interfaith spirituality. Sharing personal transformations sparked by mystical traditions from Kabbalah to Zen to Jesus, we invite you to partake in the sacred mysteries that fuel our faith journeys. With insights from spiritual leaders like Dr. Dean Lawrence Carter and the visionary Bishop Pearson, we open our hearts to the rich diversity of beliefs that define our collective search for enlightenment. So come, be part of this enlightening dialogue where we serve up a nourishing blend of wisdom, acceptance, and transformative thought on 'Spiritual Gumbeaux'.
Join us on a soul-stirring odyssey with Bishop-Elect D.E. Polk by traversing the powerful confluence of spirituality and social justice. Our conversation untangles the rich tapestry of African American communities' spiritual leadership, reflecting on his family's civil rights heritage and its influence on his ministry. We confront the unexpected resistance within marginalized groups to inclusivity, ordaining women, and embracing LGBTQ+ individuals, while also navigating the delicate balance of authenticity and trust in diverse congregations.
We take a transformative journey from traditional teachings to a theology of universal salvation and inherent divinity challenges and inspires, drawing us into a deeper discourse on the nature of hell, the devil, and scriptural contradictions. Together, we'll sift through these complex themes and rediscover the role of perceptions in shaping our divine experiences.
As we close, we'll immerse ourselves in the eclectic spiritual gumbeaux that is interfaith spirituality. Sharing personal transformations sparked by mystical traditions from Kabbalah to Zen to Jesus, we invite you to partake in the sacred mysteries that fuel our faith journeys. With insights from spiritual leaders like Dr. Dean Lawrence Carter and the visionary Bishop Pearson, we open our hearts to the rich diversity of beliefs that define our collective search for enlightenment. So come, be part of this enlightening dialogue where we serve up a nourishing blend of wisdom, acceptance, and transformative thought on 'Spiritual Gumbeaux'.
Welcome to Spiritual Gumbeaux, the podcast for spiritual leaders who choose not to lead by Western leadership theories, but based on spirituality and spiritual leadership. I'm Lynn Eaton Washington, priest in charge at the Church of the Incarnation in Southwest Atlanta, and today I would like to welcome Pastor D E Polk.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:It's good to be with you.
Rev Lynne:Or I should say Bishop-Elect.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Bishop-Elect yes, February 18th. Thank you.
Rev Lynne:Well, let's just get right to it. You are our first interview for Black
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I'm pig mentally challenged, but I'm at least close to the struggle.
Rev Lynne:Well, good, because that's a great lead-in. So tell me, how does a pastor, a pigmentally challenged pastor, lead African Americans in their spirituality, in their cultural spirituality?
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:We architect a gumbo in this spiritual community. So my history with civil rights, social justice and even human rights is very rich. My parents, the late Archbishop Earl Polk Jr and my father, pastor Don Polk, who's still alive with along with my mother, actually marched with Dr Martin Luther King Jr on several occasions in the 1960s. My father was 22 years old when he first met in the basement of Ebenezer Baptist Church with Dr King Sr. He called him Daddy King, and so Daddy King would look at my very young father and say, Don, are you ready to go to jail with me? And he had to make some interesting choices as a very young man, just fresh out of college.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:But my mother was shot at during civil rights. We were sued for protesting unlawful business practices. That really became an evolution for us. We were that. We became the first integrated church in the Southeast, only after Dr Howard Thurman in San Francisco and the Church of All Nations, and so that paradigm that I was raised in was of inclusivity, diversity, equity. We were the first Pentecostal church to ordain women into full-time ministry, eventually becoming an LGBTQ plus affirming congregation and then ultimately an interfaith expression. Of course we are.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I would love more Muslims, buddhists, hindus as a part of our spiritual community.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:We basically are a progressive Christian church that is open to interfaith expression, but guiding a predominantly African-American church spiritually is it oddly comes naturally to me because I'm a good listener and I want to understand cultural dynamics, and so in the breakdown of the teaching aspect there is a certain sense of sensitivity that I try to, that I try to architect. Furthermore, there's also a level of trust that, because of the longevity of my family in the city that I am privileged to enjoy, and so at times I feel, as a white minister, maybe I shouldn't address certain things. And I actually will ask several people that I trust that I consider confidants and counselors and say I feel like I need to address this, both social or theological issue, but from a white male perspective. How do I address this in a predominantly black church? And so I try not to live in that space that oh yeah, my family's been in civil rights for the last 60 years. There's still more for me to learn and to be sensitive to. So that's a little bit of my methodological approach.
Rev Lynne:One of the, I think, gifts of the spiritual gumbeaux is to talk to our religious leaders or spiritual leaders I really prefer that language much better about their spiritual leadership and their challenges and their spiritual leadership. Can you share?
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:So I am a homeless ally, I am a cisgender male, heteronormative. I am white, I am at least raised lower middle class American Christian and so, doing work in the in disenfranchised and marginalized communities, I'm usually greeted with a bit of jaundiced eyes as in, and I get it a level of distrust. And even after years and years of doing social justice and humanitarian work, there is still a sense of you're a part, but not really a part. And so, if you can apply that framework to my local community to become the first integrated, racially integrated church in the southeast, when the first black family joined our church, half of our white members left. I was not alive. This is 1961, 11 years before I was born. Half of our white membership left. When we ordained women into ministry, many men left. We re upset about it.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:When we became interdenominational and started having dialogue with the Catholic Church, my uncle both two of my uncles had actually took communion with Pope John Paul II, which was called Vatican II, and so some of our Pentecostals were angry that we were relating, because Pentecostals are raised with the teaching. The Book of Revelation talks about the Harlot Church. We thought that was the Catholic Church, and so now, all of a sudden, we're having communion with Pope. From there we became an LGBTQ plus affirming church and many of our it's unfair to say one, one genre, but many of our demographic, of both white families and black families, left over over the including the gay community and then, ironically, as we became an interfaith expression, some of our same gender loving couples left because they did not want to be part of a gay interfaith inclusive church. They just want to be part of a gay Christian church.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:And I found along the way, kind of that, that pedagogy or that cyclical pattern of oppression, to be very, very concerning and disconcerting. Really depressing to me, because it seems like those who have been marginalized by exclusive minds, or even by biblical the weaponization of the Bible, will in turn use that same Bible against others who are, who are seeking inclusivity, and so that pattern is. It's very subtle, it's very, it's very unconscious at times that that the thing that you hate, you become the oppressed, becomes the oppressor. Those who are colonized become colonial in their methodology.
Rev Lynne:Yes, that's so interesting because that, as an Episcopalian, this notion of the Harlot Church has been very much a part of some of the mental behaviors of those outside. And that began with us with the consecration well, with the ordination of what we call the Philadelphia 11, which were the first women to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. Well, why is that important? Because it's important for us as a denomination that links its Episcopacy back to the Roman Catholics, back to Peter and Paul, the historic church and all of the labels that come with it. And then we had the audacity to ordain Barbara Clementine Harris as the first black woman bishop of the Anglican Communion and Anglican Communion's second largest behind Roman Catholicism. So that was. And then you know, there was the black people and now the gay bishop. So, being the Harlot Church, is not such a bad thing.
Rev Lynne:I think Jesus had a harlot in his family lineage as well, absolutely I don't mind being the Harlot Church. That's what you want to think how I, how I you may ask me how I know about you.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:How do you know about me?
Rev Lynne:So I'm at Hillside, who is a great partner and friend to us, and this guy named Carlton Pearson walks in and we shared some talk time together and I later learned, because I'm not in Pentecostal circles, so I you know, but I do know John Shelby Spawn. I come from Richmond, virginia.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:And so I knew Bishop Spawn.
Rev Lynne:So my son, who probably will end up in seminary, he's going that direction. I can see it. But he's a very inclusive person. I said to him oh yeah, I'm at a meeting with this guy named Carlton. He says, mom, you're with Carlton Pearson, I'm like.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Yeah, okay, what am I supposed to do about that?
Rev Lynne:And he became animated around it. Animated, so he called me up and he says Mom, are you going to be watching Carlton Pearson's homecoming? I said, well, I hadn't planned on it, but now that you're telling me that I need to watch it, so I get on there. And I guess it was a YouTube. And this gentleman, who's not melanated, starts to talk.
Rev Lynne:And I find myself about to go into the TV screen. I'm like, oh my God, who is this guy? And then I heard you say that you were going to be speaking at Morehouse, so I'm assuming that you're living somewhere else. And the immediate thing I did was get on the phone and I said, because I knew Carlton Pearson from Bishop Bomar and I get on the start texting him and I said, who is this D E Paulk? And he just cracked up laughing and he says he's right here in Atlanta.
Rev Lynne:I said You've got to be kidding me. And so I said okay, that's my son. I told incarnation our church. I said we've got to go over to More house. We got to go announce. You know, you got to hear this, you got to be there. Well, coincidentally well, there's no such thing as coincidence but at that time our head of music education or music, went on to take a position in Durham and I'm going oh my God, I don't have a person, I have a music person.
Rev Lynne:So I called Bishop Bomar back and I said do you know anybody? And he said, well, I know a lady, Clarice Paulk. I said, okay, still not aware of anything. And she gets back to me and so she says to me on the phone well, I don't know if she told me she was 83 or 85, but she said her age and I'm thinking, oh my God, she probably can't play, but at this point I don't care. Well, she was our living witness. That age does not matter.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Come on now. It's all in the mind.
Rev Lynne:That Sunday she arrived, the thermostat went out in the sanctuary, where I mean like, okay, the thermostat went out so we had to worship in the parish hall. So she comes in and there's always the two pianos, one keys messed up on this one and the pedals are messed up on this one. And so she comes in, looking as if she came directly out of vogue and her beautiful outfit, and she says oh, I have my clothes and just as humble and wonderful she's with, I think, tony who drove her and she sat down and we normally sing the Lord's prayer and she says do you mind if I do my version of the Lord's prayer?
Rev Lynne:And I'm going. Okay, as the old folks say, she put her foot in that Lord's prayer, and it was very heartwarming for me and I felt as if I connected with somebody that I wanted to connect with and that was the biggest gift out of anything, especially for a small congregation, not a big congregation and she so graciously said I'll come again. But I got to ask my son, which was so sweet. So that's that's how I found you. So I've been on your website and, as I told you before, I love the bells as a person who at one time practiced Buddhism and to hear the bells, and Buddhism is still very much a part of my life, and it's really a part of the Christian life.
Rev Lynne:We just don't understand it in that way. Again, I think it goes back into how God speaks If you don't know what you're looking for, you don't know what to find. So I want to move into the theology of Carlton Pearson. Just recently someone said to me oh, I love Carlton Pearson, but he lost his mind. That's a good thing, and so he found his heart and lost his mind.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Thank you, think with your heart and not with your head, absolutely.
Rev Lynne:So tell me a little bit about how you will be involved in and to keep his theology alive.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:You know, it's an interesting season because I have I walked with Bishop Pearson at the inception of inclusivity and we're, I think, the only ministry colleagues that he had in his lifetime that stayed with him from the beginning of his ministry to the end of his life, his earth journey, and that's very interesting for us to have that, because we were with him in Pentecostal Holiness Expression, charismatic renewal. He was basically named the successor of Oral Roberts and then the namesake of the university, and then into inclusion, which began as as universal salvation or what he called ultimate reconciliation, that the world was reconciled to God in Christ. So our job is not to save anyone but to the good news is you have been saved, you are reconciled to God. And so he gave a lot of scriptural apologetic for that. This was really masterful and hard to argue with on an academic level. Then into, you know of course, inclusion of the gay community and the LGBTQ plus family, and then into interfaith expression and finally into what he would, what he preached as spiritual oneness or the understanding of our own innate divinity. We're made of the image and likeness of God and good. So it was quite a quantum leap from the beginnings in church of God and Christ, holiness, to this kind of inner divinity, or what he might even call a new thought or, you know, expressing our divine creative capacity, my burden and blessing in this season. He, bishop Pearson, did not name a successor. His family has named me as his successor. I perceive it as a succession of many people that are a brain trust of this legacy.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:But to take what, what his progression was, and and to reach back out to this person, that that, that said these, these words to you, he lost his mind. Where did, where did he lose you? And how can we come back to the table and let me speak your language. If it's the language of scripture, if it's the language of transcendent worship, expression, if it's the language of culture, of doctrine, whatever that language is, let's come back to this table as as open minded as we can be and see if there's not some body life that we can establish. And what I mean by that is can the hands say to the foot I have no need of you.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:And the inclusionist say to the, to the more literalistic conservative thought we have no need of this expression. And so that has not been my, my approach, because I really grew very tired with dealing with the evangelical minded church and that expression. And I just said, I'm just going to do my thing, I'm going to create my inclusive community. And now there are questions and curiosities and Nicodemuses who are coming to me by the hundreds. I'm I am not, this is not hyperbole by the hundreds. I can't keep up with the emails. I'm curious.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Bishop Pearson I loved him, I loved Azusa, I loved his preaching, but he lost me with universal salvation. And so every week, every day of my life, I am encountering people walk me through this, and so I'm having to basically kind of backtrack theologically and say, okay, let's come back to this table of, of, of, of the beloved community, and say all are welcomed, all are really welcome to this table. And just because we don't have exactly the same mind doesn't mean we can't mind the same things. People are going to change at their own pace and in their own space.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Truth is a journey and not a destination. It is unfolding and evolving progressively and organically within each person, and so our openness to to really what's not new thought, it's traditional, early church doctrine, roman and Constantinian doctrine is what Bishop Pearson brought us back to. Unfortunately, it was called heresy, but we have gotten so far away from the early, early teachings of the, the church fathers, that for hundreds of years we've taught this Augustinian approach. So now, coming back to Gregory of Nisa and Saint Jerome and Clementine it sounds like heresy. Origin. It sounds like heresy, but it's actually. What was the sanity of the early Constantinian expression?
Rev Lynne:3-3-25.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Yeah, that's right.
Rev Lynne:So you? I don't know if you know this, but the tagline of the Episcopal church all are welcome.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Wow, I love that.
Rev Lynne:That is our. If you go to any Episcopal church you see that wonderful little blue sign on the bottom that says all are welcome.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I love that.
Rev Lynne:And so that's, and again, people don't realize that's early church talk.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Yeah.
Rev Lynne:It's very early church talk. So who's the devil and what is hell for you?
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:The devil. So let's I'll explain it. You and I were talking, before we started recording, about that middle space between polarities. One of my mentors, Ern Baxter, said truth is held in tension, and that was his way of approaching the contradictory nature and dichotomous expression of Scripture. Of course we see Jesus all over the place. Jesus is, you know, he's a, he's a liberal one day and he's, you know, talking about buying swords the next day. You know, it's Paul David. They're just all over the place with contradictions, and if you're a seminarian, you're exposed to those contradictions, and so I I'll approach that similarly with this idea of the devil.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I can teach the devil on a perspective of as an individual or as an idea. The devil can be both a person or a persona. It can be a character or a consciousness, and so, as Bishop Pearson would say, he he would say I don't believe in the devil, but I'll cast it out of you, amen. In essence, if you want to create the devil in your own expression, we can create devil, we can create divinity, we can create hell, we can create heaven, and that can take on metaphysical expression if you're, if you give your mind over to it enough, meaning. You can have experiences in devil, feeling like the devil has consumed you, or you can have the experiences of knowing that the divine is taking over your body. That's the power of our minds. And so in that approach, in that inclusive approach, the devil for me Is really just Diablo in the Greek, adversary, anything that's adversarial of thought.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:However, in the Aramaic, if you're for me with the Cabores manuscript, powerful teaching on this idea of devil, when Jesus is driven into the wilderness, he is not with devil, he's not with Diablo or Satan, he is with a kucha in the Aramaic, which means uprightness, unbeat. I mean I literally talk about wanting to get up and get a Pentecostal run go. When I read that, I thought Jesus is not with a devil, jesus is with his higher self, calling his lower self out of the egoic mind. And so I began to break that down in my spiritual community that if there, if there is a devil, it is the uprightness in you, calling you into yours. So Jesus comes out of the wilderness, teaching, preaching, healing, manifesting the kingdom. Yes, if there is a devil, it's working for God. That's, that's some of the way I teach it.
Rev Lynne:Yeah, well, you know it's, it's, it's a it reminds me of. You're probably too young for it. No, flip Wilson, the devil made me do. I remember flip saying that, yes, the devil made me do it you know and this notion that we are the devil and when we choose not to try to go to our highest self in being, because we're making a conscious decision to stay where we are right, yeah and that in many ways for me is is Are looking in the face of evil.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:If you are unwilling to grow.
Rev Lynne:I've always been taught in Seminary that every time you pick up scripture, you should see something different.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Love that the daily bread.
Rev Lynne:Yeah, well, not well, not yeah. The daily bread, that's exactly the manner?
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:That's the question. Yeah, the curiosity.
Rev Lynne:If you're still saying the same thing that you said ten years ago, Mmm right then where's your growth in this?
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:and.
Rev Lynne:What I have come to. Where I was 20 this is my 26th year ordained ministry but when I was 26 years ago is this you know?
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Mm-hmm.
Rev Lynne:Just firing. You know, this is the way it is. Mm-hmm and where I am now has come from that, just that simple Seminary understanding every time you read scripture.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Hmm.
Rev Lynne:You should have something new.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Isn't that the evidence of the Holy Spirit in our lives?
Rev Lynne:Yes, it should be.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I was raised under the fear of Blasph eming the Holy Spirit, you know, because Jesus talked about it's an unforgivable sin, but he never says what it is, and so in this, in the messianic secret.
Rev Lynne:We don't really know what it is.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:It's so important, why didn't you describe it to us? Don't leave us out here. You know, yeah, and so I read some mystical teaching by Matthew Fox. If you're familiar with the teaching, Matthew Fox, that's my next.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Sermon on the Mount Unbelievable. He breaks down. So he does the teaching of the beatitude and the sermon on the mount, but then he breaks down. What is the sin against the Holy Spirit? And I don't hopefully this is in a spoiler alert if you're going into the series but the agency of the Holy Spirit, perikletos, is to guide us into all truth. So, first of all, there's an admission of an open canon. Everything that we have is not into Biblia, the 66 scrolls that we call this nice an canonized Bible.
Rev Lynne:Well, and it's really not, 66 is 80.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Yeah, if you look at the.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Ethiopian text and then, and the Gnostic Gospels that are just for me are just as powerful as the Synoptic Gospels. And so, yeah, what is this canon? What does it look like? And can it be limited? It's, and should it ever be, limited.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:But this idea of the sin against the Holy Spirit, according to Matthew Fox, was what you just described, this concretization, crystallization, this, if you will, constipation of Theological doctrinal dogma that you can't learn anything else. You've got your catechisms in order. There's nothing new and nothing fresh. You are sinning against the Holy Spirit. You are not allowing the full agency of the organic spirit of truth to lead you out of religious preservatives and into spiritual organic foods. And the reason it can't be forgiven is not because God or Jesus won't forgive it, it's because we don't know that we're doing it. It's a stalemate of stagnation. You mentioned something about Buddhism earlier. My awakening, or the beginning of what I still think is a constant awakening, began with what I know now as Buddhist emptiness. I didn't know to call it that, I just called it. I don't know, and I cried out. I cried out in my prayers, I don't know, almost in frustration, and when I said those words, a portal opened up inside of me that I can't even describe.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I sat with Dr Dean Lawrence Carter, who is the curator of at Morehouse and has been over the MLK Chapel for 40 plus years. He came and he showed up at my office one day and he said I've been listening to you teach on Kabbalah and I said, sir, I'm not sure I'm familiar. And he said you don't study Kabbalah? I said no, sir, and so he started explaining to me all the thought progressions of Kabbalah, and I had never even heard the word. But somehow, in my desire to empty out of old constructs and to allow spirit to truly speak without filter, I was tapping into things I'd never studied. I was knowing things that I'd never been taught.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:And Dr Carter, who is very much a mystic he'll be here as part of the consecration on the 18th basically gave me vernacular to understand that I had tapped into beginner's mind, zen, and Zen it would be called beginner's mind and in Jesus, the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was a mystic, jesus was metaphysical. He would say to us enter into the kingdom of God like a child. You've heard of old, but I say there is something organic. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded in the Greek verb a constant action, and so that childlike inquisitiveness and curiosity is really a refusal of mastery and it's a surrendering to mystery. I know, once we start talking about the beginner's mind, I can go forever, so I'm going to shut up. No, no, no, no.
Rev Lynne:This is very good because for, hopefully, the listeners who listen to spiritual gumbeaux one I want to say and maybe you might want to just share we did an interview with Swami Ma, and Swami Ma is a Buddhist priest, a Buddhist master.
Rev Lynne:She's 81 or so and she lives, I don't know, but anyway I don't know Atlanta that well, but anyway she's here and she is her teachings or her understandings are on spiritual gumbeaux and for those who are listening, I think are those who are taking up the mantle and the challenge, to grow to be bigger, and so to hear these things and to know that there are other people who think and understand the things that I think and understand and who are in line with wanting other people to grow, and I think that's really what, when we're talking about love and healing, that this is, in my opinion, what it looks like. This is what it looks like.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I love, absolutely love the word gumbo because to me it's spiritual, it's also anecdotal of the late Carlton Pearson. If you ever ate a meal with him he would take we would have, we would go to wherever Pascals in Atlanta he wants some soul food and we would. He would have his meat, his vegetables, his starch and he would just take it and just he would just mix it all together. It would just be this big goulash, kind of a gumbo of expression. And so I was sitting one day watching him do that and I said you know, this is who you are. He said what do you mean? And I said the way you eat is who you are. You will take from COGIC and Buddhism and you will learn from the same gender loving community and from our humanist brothers and sisters and women. You take all this together and you just have no qualms with just adding this big gumbo or interfaith thing that has no specific definition to it.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:And I looked over, I could be emotional and I saw a little tear coming down his eye and he said that is who I am. I said I didn't know it until I was, you know, 50 years old. But I am a walking gumbo, I'm a goulash of I'm just kind of a bohemian connection of all of these things, and he had no apologies about it, it was so beautiful. He just looked at me and said I don't want to be monolithic, I want to be all of this. And he referred to Paul saying I become all things to all people. Now, the colonization of that is so that I can save you. So we have to be cautious with 1 Corinthians, chapter 9. But the methodology of becoming all things is really a beautiful expression and that's really who Carlton Pearson was.
Rev Lynne:I am. You talked a little bit about Matthew Fox. Matthew Fox was probably one of my earliest theologians this notion of Christ consciousness. So I went back just about three weeks ago and I said, you know, I, having been divorced, I lost a lot of books and stuff like that. And I said, you know, this is a call for me to set up a spiritual library for those who want to take part in it. Tell me how. This is a two-part question. Tell me how you develop spiritual leadership amongst those who are in your community and then tell me a little bit about your Christ consciousness. You've said you've hit on it a lot, but for those who are listening, who need, this is the definition.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Sure, sure. So Matthew Fox. I was introduced to Matthew Fox in 2009. He was the keynote speaker when I was inducted into the Morehouse College Hall of Preachers and it was you know, it was. Bishop Pearson was there with me that day. So after the ceremony we went back into a banquet hall and you know I was watching other ministers get up and walk out on Matthew Fox because he was talking. He was talking on his new book, one River, many Wells, and that book it's still in my life. I refer to it constantly. But what he did in One River, many Wells is he took I don't know seven or eight different spiritual traditions, even from indigenous peoples the Toltec wisdom, buddhist, hindu, christian, jewish, islamic and he showed similar teachings in all of these different faith paths and it's really almost a practice of Baha'i that I encountered.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I sat at that luncheon. I did not eat my food and if you've ever eaten with me, I eat all of my food. There's nothing left on my plate. I am not shy. I'm like go ahead and talk, I'm going to eat while you talk?
Rev Lynne:I do not.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I'm not shy about food and I just sat there with Bishop Pearson thinking how could people be walking out right now? This is a brilliant interfaith. The only thing I've even heard close to it and this may be controversial is I was asked to sit on the stage with Minister Louis Farrakhan the last time he spoke in Atlanta at the Civic Center and of course he went into systemic injustice that every eye in the room was looking at me in my face after that because it's a space that they weren't familiar with me in. But before he got into that expression, his teaching on interfaith understanding was the best I've ever heard in my life, other than Matthew Fox. It was unbelievable.
Rev Lynne:So let me say about Minister Farrakhan. Minister Farrakhan was an Anglican from the Bahamas. He's from the Bahamian origin. So if you're in the island, you're the Anglican church right. So he was married at St Cyprian's Roxbury. He was confirmed at St Cyprian's.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Roxbury.
Rev Lynne:Massachusetts and he spoke to the Union of Black Episcopalians many years ago in Chicago and he was very clear. He said the reason I left talks about growing up and there's the picture of the Queen and the White Jesus on the wall.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Colonization is best.
Rev Lynne:Yes, he said the reason I left the Episcopal church was because they were not speaking about justice. Wow, and I met a man named Malcolm.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:X. Wow, wow, beautiful. What a rich history.
Rev Lynne:And again, if we look at this notion of the media and really how Anglicans are supposed to operate, or Episcopalians, you will see that there but popular culture and when I mean popular culture, maybe I should say static culture.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Sure.
Rev Lynne:You know, we always have to have somebody to hate. We've got to hate the blacks, we've got to hate the women.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:It's good for business. Now we've got to hate the gays.
Rev Lynne:LBGTQX.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Unbelievers? Yes, absolutely.
Rev Lynne:You know, we've got to hate the Jews, we've got to hate the Palestinians. There always has to be the enemy. Right, there always has to be an enemy you know that's good for business.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:I've finished my master's thesis on the survivability of inclusive religion and so the sociological quantitative work is that without enemies it's hard to build a community, a spiritual community. Now you can build one, but sometimes the financial solvency becomes a little bit unstable because, whether it's missionizing or demonizing, you know other people who don't think like us. That is good for business and good for camaraderie. You mentioned about the Christ consciousness and I wanted to speak to that because you and I we have such an easy connection like we just go all over the place Christ consciousness in the way that I teach it, and I taught it on Easter Sunday morning in the Cathedral, the 7000 seat Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in 2006. So 18 years ago I taught Christ consciousness on Easter Sunday morning at 34 years, 33 years old. That was the year that Jesus died. That was my crucifixion as well. I stood up there and said Jesus was not the first Christ.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:There have been many Christ expressions and I took them historically to Sri Krishna of India, to Mithra of Mesopotamia, in some archetypes, horus of Egypt, and then eventually, as I lost everyone of the congregation, I brought it back to Jesus, became an expression of that Christ, born culturally, tribalistically, misogynistically, but surrendered to that same Christ mind that is called many different things and in different faith expressions. I still was not quite with everybody. I said, furthermore, jesus is not the first Christ in your Bible, and I introduced them to the High Priest, melchizedek, who, in Hebrews 5, 6, and 7, there's this description of this priest, which Jesus comes in a different order. He's not born into the priesthood of Melchizedek, he chooses to be. Paul basically graphs Jesus into the order of Melchizedek.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:And this description of Melchizedek that he is never born, will never die, he has no mother, no father, no genealogy, no beginning of days or ending of life, made like the Son of God, exists continually. And then Jesus becomes a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. And so in that way we were able to separate Son of man and Son of God, the historical Jesus of Nazareth and the eternal Christ expression that has no name, that is the I Am, that I Am that expresses genderlessly, namelessly, labellessly, and so in that way we are able to offer to people. You can still be connected to God through Jesus. That's my connection. I'm connected to the divine reality through Jesus of Nazareth. However, that is not the only connection. This spirit of the Christ that's called many different things is so much bigger than any specific construct or religion.
Rev Lynne:And we really hear that in the beginning of Genesis when they talk about I mean, I just love our classic theologians like to put it in a box about the heavenly beings Plural.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Mm-hmm, yeah, our images. There you go.
Rev Lynne:And it's like mm-mm, it's bigger than Father's Trinitarian concept, the male Trinitarian concept, you also talked a little bit about Christ consciousness. I just finished an online class for Hillside Blacks in the Bible, and one of the entities that so seldom talked about only during Purim, is Esther, whose name is actually.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Esther and who.
Rev Lynne:actually there is no mention of God in the Book of Esther, because she was thought to be the anointed savior and so she actually did say, because that's our first real biblical understanding of a Holocaust of which she had to step out into to save her people and her being ashtar. That is actually who she was, ashtar, and how we have actually looked. We have not looked at that image of her Number one. It's important, especially in Black History Month, to see this woman a melanated woman. Nine times out of 10, came from a non-sophatic background Ashkenoski background probably was of Ethiopic background and to know that she had a very special role in the salvation of or the saving of her people as an anointed woman.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:My goodness, look at that art, look at the archetypes of all the Christ's.
Rev Lynne:Yes unbelievable. Yes, and for people to understand that, that's about anointing.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:So the beautiful individual who's helping us to record this today is named Emanuel. God with us, and it's an interesting dynamic. I usually teach or remind our spiritual community during the Christmas season. We know that Jesus was not born in December. That's another piece of Christ consciousness Hercules, dionysius, krishna, all born December 25th. What's the coincidence here? Come on now. This is astrologically driven.
Rev Lynne:That's amen.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:So whether wherever Jesus was born, march or April not in Bethlehem, by the way, in Nazareth that will let you know a little bit about the tainting of man's opinion. In scripture, the Gospel of Luke puts Jesus born in Bethlehem, which is odd.
Rev Lynne:Jesus is from Nazareth, but Micah, who Micah?
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:thank you, micah, which I named my son. My son is named Micah because he seemed to be a fairly genuine prophet in a day of mercenary prophets. But Micah prophesied that Jesus will be born in Bethlehem, and so Luke is basically trying to fulfill a prophecy by tainting the scriptures in some ways. But the story around Jesus' name is very peculiar to me because the angel is recorded to have said call his name Jesus, yeshua, joshua in the English, which is translated as the savior of his people, and so that becomes very xenophobic. It becomes very hierarchical when he approaches the Canaanite woman, approaches him and says Heal my daughter. She's troubled. Why are you speaking to me? I didn't come for you. You and your people are dogs. I only came for the lost sheep of the house of vision. First of all, that's very difficult to see the son of man operating in his culturalization, in his misogyny and xenophobia.
Rev Lynne:Secondly, so we could go so many places with this, but you said that the son of man is not quite yet surrendered to the son of God or the higher consciousness within himself.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:When people ask me inclusively, I'm the way, the truth and the life. John 14,. No man comes to the father but by me. I always asked him who is the me? Is it the culturalized, racist, misogynistic Jesus who, when they called him Joshua, he acted like Joshua, he acted like the savior of his people only. Or are you talking about the Christ working in Jesus? That can be seen in Gandhi, chikannat, hanh, dalai Lama many different expressions, of course. And so, in that framework, when they called him Jesus, he acted like Jesus. He acted culturally, he acted tribalistically, but his name from the prophet was to be Emmanuel, god, divinity with us, or the Christ, the anointed one. And so all of those expressions are part of our dynamic in Christ consciousness, and they don't have to be in contradiction with each other. It can be a moving from glory to glory.
Rev Lynne:You know, we've talked a little bit about what those who would vehemently disagree with us, the inheritance of scripture, and one of the things that I just recently preached about and I don't know if people really got it is this notion that there was no Martha. What we have found, elizabeth I think her name is Elizabeth Shuler, who was a seminarian at my seminary, kept the spirit, kept saying something's wrong here, and so she went back and eventually got the original copies of the original papyrus and noticed that the handwriting was different to then on one word, and then started to make a kick up some dust about it and said you know, because no one took the time to blow it up and really look at it, look at that, that's not the same handwriting. And so what they have now ascertained through the biblical scholarship is that that was an added name.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Wow.
Rev Lynne:There was no one Amazing.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Yeah.
Rev Lynne:Now, how do we unteach that? How do we unteach that? How do we unteach that to the countless women who put themselves in the space of Martha and Mary, who divide each other based off of oh well, I'm here to serve the coffee but, I'm here to sit at the foot of pastor.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Wow.
Rev Lynne:How do we unteach that?
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:How do we unlearn it? You know the finagling of scripture, the Martha, the Jesus being born in Bethlehem, which is bizarre it also leads into. You asked me earlier about the teaching of my teaching on hell. So in the Old Testament we have Sheol, which is basically just the grave or death. There's no sense of punishment, it's just a holding space. Then you get into Hades, which is borrowed from Greek mythology, and Hades is both part of the Old Testament and New Testament, as mentioned at times in the Septuagint. But then in the New Testament Jesus mostly uses the phrase Gehenna, which is a city outside of Jerusalem where they burn trash, but when it talks about both in the teachings of Jesus and in some of the Pauline epistles, anytime you see the word everlasting fire.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Everlasting fire or eternal fire, it is the Greek word aeon, which is not eternal. It comes from the root word eon and so if you really read the Greek in Young's literal translation it means an age abiding. And the beautiful thing about fire and even brimstone is it has medicinal qualities. The word brimstone is the English word sulfur, the common use. Sulfur is used in even when we go to the doctor. Are you allergic to sulfur? It has medicinal quality. And so, when we get into this space of the character, of the ultimate mind of the universe needing to eternally torture people in this chamber, where we have a customized body suit that can burn but never be burned up, we have to take into, I believe, question the character of God and what's at stake here. Is God a torturer or a teacher? Is God punitive or purgative? Is God cruel or is God corrective? And so, when we think about 2.2 billion Christians among 8.1 billion humans, is God's earth project a failure, if only?
Rev Lynne:20%. Wow, that's a different way to look at that.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:What teacher do you know would ever establish? What is it? When a teacher has been teaching for a long time, they earn their tenure. What tenure teacher graduates? 20% of their students.
Rev Lynne:I love that. It's very refreshing.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:It's a pragmatic approach to. Is God, failing at this earth project, going to drown us once with Noah or Utnapishtan, you know, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, going to burn us later because he or she can't teach us or we can't learn it? God repents of the day ever created us. All of this is a man's understanding about God. Bishop Pearson, the first person who said to me, de, the Bible is not God's word to man, it's a man's word about God. God's word is contained in some of the Bible, but also man's word, and we must study to be able to rightly divide the word of truth between opinion. Soulishly, all of that takes, as I said, all of Bishop Pearson's, all six of his home going celebrations that I spoke of.
Rev Lynne:Oh six.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:Six, it's six home going celebrations. He was not questioned by the academy, he was denounced by the church. Train seminarians could not argue with him because, even if they didn't agree with what he was saying, from a historical critical methodology, he was teaching sound doctrine and he could be proven from scripture, not as isolated, but a pattern of scripture. So train seminarians Harvard University is the only he is the only Pentecostal minister to have his intellectual properties archived at Harvard Divinity. That will tell you that the higher mind knew that he had something. He was on it. It was, unfortunately, those who are kind of self appointed and ordained because they have a gifting of spirit, who are not really they're not really scriptorians or academicians who did not, were not able to grasp what Bishop Pearson was saying.
Rev Lynne:And that's that's. That's really. It's very sad because the many lives that they have you know there's an African concept called ashe, the year of us talk about, and what you speak, you speak into existence and unfortunately, they have the gift of ashe and have used this ashe to mislead. And that's the danger, because they have decided to make a decision that they don't want to renew their minds. Right, the scripture, if you really want to talk about Paul, talks about that too.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:The renewing of the mind.
Rev Lynne:Well, I want to thank you, bishop-elect Polk, for taking time out in this, this podcast, and I want to also say that all are welcome. We should be a mantra for all of us All are welcome. I tell people on Sunday mornings, this is not God's table, I mean, this is not Incarnation's table or the Episcopal church. This is God's table, and all are welcome. Please come.
Bishop Elect D E Paulk:And I love that.
Rev Lynne:Again, thank you. I'm Lynn Washington. This is the ending of our podcast with Bishop-Elect Dee E Polk at Spirit and Truth in Decatur, here outside of the city of Atlanta. Please join us at 11 am or on strip Facebook as well as take a listen into spiritual gumbo. You'll find many jewels as you journey in your spiritual life and faith. Shalom Asalaamu Alaikum, peace Alayhi Ya'ala.